This K-beauty giant is taking over North America, one brand at a time

Amorepacific might not be as well known in North America as L’Oréal, Estée Lauder, or P&G, but K-beauty’s second wave is quickly carrying the 80-year-old Korean beauty giant’s brands overseas.

The company, founded in 1945 and home to South Korea’s first cosmetics lab, operates a slew K-beauty brands—including Laneige, COSRX, Innisfree, and Sulwhasoo—that’ve been FYP mainstays in the latest TikTok-driven rise in K-beauty popularity that pushed sales up 37% to $2 billion last year, per NielsenIQ.

With the size of its North American business nearly quadrupling in recent years, Amorepacific named Giovanni Valentini, a beauty veteran who spent more than 20 years at Unilever and L’Oréal on brands like Dove and Lancôme USA, as North American CEO in 2024. Its Americas business revenue jumped 20% YoY in 2025, and 11.2% in Q1 2026, the company reported last month.

While eye-catching ingredients like snail mucin and PDRN (which is derived from salmon sperm) have helped the company’s brands go viral, Amorepacific is working to convert the second wave into a movement through new brand launches, innovations, and retail partnerships with Amazon and Sephora.

Active beauty: Amorepacific’s North American growth has been driven both by the success of leading brands like Laneige’s lip treatments and COSRX’s serums and creams, and the accelerated introduction of additional portfolio brands to the market.

Part of Valentini’s job is determining brands’ readiness to be “exported” to the North American market, he said, often informed by a “phase of test and learn” on Amazon. Amorepacific’s skin care brands Primera, Mise En Scène, and Illiyoon, hair care brands RYO and Labo-H, and makeup brands Espoir and Etude are among those sold on Amazon that’ve yet to be formally launched in North America. During the e-commerce giant’s Big Spring Sale last month, its brands’ sales surged 201% YoY, with Illiyoon selling 40,000 units of its flagship cream. After a testing period, Amorepacific launched decades-old skin care brand Mamonde exclusively on Amazon Premium Beauty last week.

For when these brands are ready for their retail debuts, Amorepacific has been working closely with Sephora, which it’s partnered with for several years, carrying Laneige, Sulwasoo, and Innisfree, and has been doubling down on its K-beauty assortment. Last year, Amorepacific launched skin care brands Hanyul and Aestura exclusively at the retailer, and in March, the company debuted 30-year-old clinical-grade skin care brand IOPE there.

Points of distribution for K-beauty brands are multiplying by the minute: Along with retailers like Sephora, Target, and Ulta Beauty, Olive Young’s first US location in California opens this month, while Asian beauty chain Sukoshi has a slate of openings planned across the US and Canada. The company’s five-year roadmap for its North American launches aims to create a “portfolio that is well differentiated,” without adding a “level of complexity” that would harm its core business, Valentini said.

“Our strategy is not to indiscriminately distribute the brand, because we know that ultimately, in every single point of distribution where you are, you should be able to visit the store, develop the relationship with the beauty advisor from the retailer, execute events, elevate experience,” he said.

Skin in the game: When brands do expand to retail, easy-to-understand clinical data on effectiveness—Aestura has been marketed as “Korea’s No. 1 dermatologist-recommended dermocosmetic brand for sensitive skin”—have made them “easy to plug and play into the market,” Valentini said.

During his time at L’Oréal, Valentini said he learned the importance of “nurturing” brands for longevity, since relying on a trending ingredient that’s easily duped “makes your position quite fragile.” Amorepacific’s vertical integration with in-house development and manufacturing and science-backed proprietary formulas give it a competitive edge, he said. That’s especially true as consumers increasingly shop via agentic commerce, where brands with clear data, ingredients, and use cases are positioned to win.

“This is an interesting change from the power of storytelling and marketing to the power of data and science beyond products,” Valentini said. “But of course, without forgetting that ultimately what attracts consumers is the alchemy of function and emotion.”

Up next, the company will look to expand beyond skin care to introduce its hair care and makeup brands, including products like K-beauty staple cushion foundation, to the North American market.